Compose a 750 words essay on Emerging Adulthood. Needs to be plagiarism free!Download file to see previous pages... One way to understand the changes in this development stage would be to consider Eri

Compose a 750 words essay on Emerging Adulthood. Needs to be plagiarism free!

One way to understand the changes in this development stage would be to consider Erikson’s psychosocial theory. According to Erik Erikson (1903 – 1994), a personality theorist, people face crisis of psychosocial dilemma at each stage in life (Weiten, 2010). This psychosocial dilemma refers to a conflict that exists between personal impulses and their respective social world. By resolving each of these dilemmas, there arises a balance between the person and the society. A series of success results in healthy development and satisfaction in life whereas unfavorable outcomes throw people off balance, making it difficult to handle future crises.

Emerging adulthood according to Erikson entails a conflict between intimacy and isolation. This stage would be characterized by the need for intimacy, including the need to share deep friendship or meaningful love with others. It is a period that largely involves exploration of relationships. Erikson’s theory refers to intimacy as being able to care about other people and share experiences with them. As observed by Weiten (2010), a majority of emerging adults would rank marriage and perfect family as critical goals in adulthood. In order to move to the next stage, there would be need for emerging adults to form committed relationships. Successful resolution of emerging adulthood challenges leads to openness and empathy. Even so, sexual involvement or marriage does not guarantee intimacy with many relationships remaining unfulfilling. The sense of isolation, resulting from the failure to establish intimacy, could be a cause for future difficulties. By appreciating the existence of a development stage between adolescence and adulthood, Erikson set the stage for other theorists to explore the emerging adulthood development stage. One such theorist is Jeffrey Jensen Arnett who considered emerging adulthood as a distinct development period, different from adolescence and young adulthood preceding and following it respectively. Thus, Arnett (2000) evaluated this development stage using five features that distinguish this developmental stage. First, Arnett (2000) considers emerging adulthood as the age of identity explorations. This is the period where people explore varied possibilities in life, particularly those regarding work and love, aimed at setting the foundation for adult life. In search of their identities, these emerging adults get to understand what they would want in life. Secondly, Arnett considers emerging adulthood as the age of instability due to the explorations that make the period highly stimulating. Such persons exhibit frequent changes in work, education and love as they seek for different possibilities in life. Furthermore, emerging adulthood is a self-focused period where the involved persons cease being selfish and self-centered as they were in adolescence and become self-focused. Because of the minimal social obligations and commitments and duties to others, they tend to have greater autonomy in their lives, thus the self-focus. This development period involves a feeling of being in-between.